By 1948, President Harry S. Truman recognized that the path to
winning another term was through securing the votes of a burgeoning
black electorate, and he openly courted northern black support and
advanced the cause of civil rights. The 1948 election was a turning
point in southern politics, because the Democratic Party split on
the race issue. Truman, after returning to D.C. from a 1948
campaign trip, courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records
Administration.

For decades, political scientists conducted election studies in
which they singled out the American South because its politics was
different. Generations of southern Democrats held office amidst a
feeble Republican opposition, and, for many, more often than not
there was no Republican challenger. During these days of the “Solid
South,” it seemed reasonable to omit the region from a political
analysis because there was no point in studying a constant;
Democratic electoral dominance across all levels of office-holding,
from bottom to top, was nearly complete. But eventually things
changed. Starting with presidential elections in the 1950s, the
moribund southern Republican Party began its gradual rise. Now,
things have changed so much that the South is once again
exceptional, but this time because it is so overwhelmingly
Republican.2

This essay surveys the partisan transformation of southern
politics. It begins with the unrivaled status of southern
Democrats. Next, using the lens of presidential elections and how
they structure the positions of the parties on major issues, is a
chronicle of the long ascent of the southern gop .
The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the near-and
long-term electoral prospects for both parties. In the immediate
future it seems that Republican dominance will persist, but a
longer time horizon bodes well for Democrats as demographic changes
favor their party.

The Solid South: The Democratic Past

Whether it was through the use of constitutional conventions or
routine legislative processes, by institutionalizing numerous
disenfranchising laws all across the South, Democrats successfully
enacted a voting apparatus that served a singular purpose—the
creation of an electorate whose participants would favor the
Democratic Party. The highly unrepresentative and restricted
electorate that southern Democrats created ensured their political
monopoly for over half a century.3

The fruits of southern Democrats’ labor to establish and
maintain a one-party system can be prominently displayed with data
on U.S. House elections. These contests are an excellent barometer
for depicting party strength because all U.S. House seats are up
for election every two years and the number of southern
congressional districts is large (typically over a hundred for any
decennial census). Figure 1 shows the percentage of
Democratic and Republican U.S. House seats in the South from 1868
to 2010. We will revisit this figure in the next section that
explains Republican ascendancy, but for now it is worth noting the
astounding dominance of the Democratic Party from 1898 to 1948—a
roughly flat line of Democratic control of the southern U.S. House
delegation. During these fifty years the lowest Democratic share of
southern U.S. House seats was 93 percent in 1920.

We also see that Democratic rule in House contests begins in
1874, but it isn’t consolidated until after the Populist revolt of
the 1890s, when we see a marked dip in Democratic House seats in
the 1896 election. The mid-1870s to the late 1890s, when southern
Democrats are institutionalizing Jim Crow and enacting
disfranchising laws, is captured in Figure 1, because House
contests highlight this lengthy interlude when southern Democrats
are engaged in locking down their one-party system.

Click for larger view

Figure 1.

The Percentage of Democrats and Republicans in the Southern U.S.
House Delegation, 1868–2010

NOTE: The U.S. House data from 1868 to 2004 were compiled by the
author from CQ Press, Guide to U.S. House Elections: Volume
II, 5th Edition (Washington, D.C...

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